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How to mentally dominate your own team

Guides have been written about waging a psychological battle against the other team, but they all suck.

They suck because controlling the other team's mental space is hard work and those guides are too difficult for simple minded people to understand.

Messing with your own team's mental game is much easier, and since lots of dim-witted players try to do it I have written this guide to help them be better at it.

Here are some specific strategies and rules to get inside your team's heads and force them to play better.

Rule #1: Trash Talk Your Own Team

This is an awesome strategy. Use it often.

Clearly you know every build and how to play every character better than your teammates. Be sure to point out the weaknesses in your teammates play-style or item choices, and do so using lots of profanity so they will listen to you more. (Swearing makes you sound smarter and enhances your credibility.)

Did someone overextend and die? Obviously they did it on purpose and/or they suck. Yelling at them, insulting them, calling them noobs or feeders, these all help people play better and make better decisions. It's the only way to make them better teammates.

Did you overextend and die? Make sure you freak out because Shen didn't ult to you or someone didn't shield you or come to your rescue. It couldn't possibly be because they were in combat, pushing towers, on cooldown, or you were too far away.

Insulting them will make them want to help you more next time you are in trouble. It helps foster team spirit too.

As a plus, if you suffer from penile inadequacies and those pills you bought online didn't help, complaining about your teammates in /all can make your little Vienna Sausage seem bigger.

Rule #2: Brag about your kills

Your contribution to the team is solely defined by how many enemies you killed.

Since you have the most kills on your team, you are the one doing all the work. Those players with shields, buffs, taunts, slows, and stuns are just baggage. You didn't need all that minion killing, turret defense, crowd control, tankage and aoe damage softening them up. You could have soloed their entire 5 man team.

Make sure your teammates know this so they will stop playing their useless support roles and all start playing DPS champions.

Rule #3: Spasmodically Ping The Map

When you ping a turret that is being pushed once , or say "teemo" and ping a spot on the map, your teammates may not get the message.

Instead, ping a spot on the map at least 17 times.

You might think this would be annoying or distracting to your teammates who are busy doing something unimportant like fighting or pushing, but it isn't. It helps motivate them and keeps their mind on their most important task, which is to try to figure out what the hell you are pinging for.

Remember, if one ping is good, 63 are better.

Rule #4: Never Show Weakness

People will question your skills and manhood if you show weakness.

And by weakness, I mean humility, support, or gratitude.

If someone kills a turret or gets a double kill, don't congratulate them with a quick "gj!", it'll make your own kills seem less impressive.

If someone saves you from imminent gankage, don't say "thx", it's what they're supposed to be doing anyway.

If someone apologizes for not saving you or not getting somewhere in time, don't say "np". They are losers, and it's not like this is just a game or something. Apologies aren't enough.

Being supportive and grateful ruins your team's respect for you. Don't do it.

Rule #5: Vote to Surrender Early and Often

Everyone knows that once you get pushed back to your base, it's all over.

Even though the base is the easiest place to defend and win team battles there is no hope for a comeback at this point. Winning a team battle at your base might mean getting the money and levels you have been lacking all game and give you a full minute to push back, but you are doomed anyway, so call a surrender vote.

If the first one fails, call another one.

Do it when you die, or even better yet do it while standing at the base doing nothing while the rest of your team is in combat. The surrender vote pop-up is very unobtrusive and doesn't bother people when they are trying to target enemies, so use it as often as you want.

It can also help to improve your teams confidence and demoralize the other team when a surrender is voted down, so do it as early as possible in the game. Some players even use it after only two or three towers go down, but these are real pro's so you'll want to work up to that.

Rule #6: Always Blame Your Teammates When You Lose.

If you use all of these strategies and somehow you have not created the highly motivated, tightly-knit Navy Seal Team you were trying to make, it's because your teammates are all idiots, noobs, feeders and losers. Tell them this after the game is over. (IN ALL CAPS, WITH PROFANITY OF COURSE!!!!!)

Tell them they are the worst team you've ever played with. It may help them play better next game, and might also help with that little size problem down there that we were talking about earlier.

If one person in particular wasn't doing their job, single them out so everyone knows. It's possible they are trying a new character, but that's no excuse. People should only play with characters they are good at, not learn new ones.

You can't get good at this game by practicing and making mistakes. You're either born good at it or you shouldn't play.

***

I am confident that if you begin playing by these rules you will immediately become more of a "winner".

Always remember: It's not about having fun, it's about winning.

I cannot take credit for developing these strategies, they were taught to me by many players more experienced than I.

So am I supposed to take this seriously or is this the mentality I am not supposed to take?

To be completely honest, I've tried the first step on several occasions and I get mixed results. Example from last night:

Target: "Who's tanking?"

Me: "Why? Too selfish to tank yourself?"

Target "Lol noob. I'm playing Ezreal, and I get first pick so I pick whatever I want"

Me: "Lol, wut?"

Target "That's not how you spell what you ******."

This started in draft mode and went well into the first ten minutes into the game (I eventually ended it). By the end of the game, I had the most kills, while Ezreal averaged as middle of the road in terms of team performance. By chance though, the other team had an Annie who sucked (She ganked, but didn't get a kill because she couldn't tibber-stun. Whenever she did use a stun combo, she always did Q->W->R, which barely did anything), and everyone else on the team was fairly lackluster.

So yeah. Just a matter of which player you choose to trash talk/troll, and whether your enemy team is competent or not.

This is an excellent way to respond. By discouraging simple questions you force them to focus on playing rather than irrelevant things like determining team roles. It seems you have the basics of the guide down pretty well.

"Whenever your teammates die defending and end up suiciding remember to congratulate them and insult them to make yourself look better. Not only will it remind them that your better , But it will increase there chances of doing it again. Its a win-win!

All very good points OP. One of my favorite tactics to get my team to work together is to make sure to mock them in /all. I find this boosts my own team's morale and crushes the opponents. Plus, I might even get some sympathy from the other team, since that is more important than actually winning the game.

All very good points OP. One of my favorite tactics to get my team to work together is to make sure to mock them in /all. I find this boosts my own team's morale and crushes the opponents. Plus, I might even get some sympathy from the other team, since that is more important than actually winning the game.